English | Thai

Photo credit: provided by subject

I am half Thai & half English, but ancestry DNA has shown I'm 25% Scottish and 25% English. My Mum is from Thailand and my Dad is from England. They were both members of the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints, a branch of Christianity. My Father came over to Thailand with his friend and met my Mum in the chapel and from then, that was the beginning and the end. Sadly they divorced when I was 1 years old. Occasional trips with my Father brought statements of all Thai women being liars and cheats. He would make racist comparisons from the show ‘Little Britain’ and my Mum which would upset me deeply. From the age of 3, my Mum and I moved to Wales and I went to school being unable to speak and read English needing extra support from my teachers.

I've never felt English and only visited occasionally to see my Dad and family. I attended an English school in Wales but still learnt some Welsh. I'm honoured to live in the country of song, mountains and harps. They say you can take a girl out of the valley but not the valley out of the girl. Being mixed-race in primary school made me stand out like a sore thumb. My hot meals prepared by my Mum carrying smells of herbs and spices immediately became the subject of bullying. It was branded stinky Chinese food and I felt like I had stepped onto the wrong planet. Now it has less of a stigma because at uni, nobody cares. I'm instead isolated from other people due to my lack of social skills and connection. I don't laugh at jokes or things that other people find humorous as I have been brought up on a different kind of humour. It's funny how humour can connect and separate people

Growing up, my Mum has taken me back to Thailand during summer holidays but it has definitely been less frequent as I entered my teenage years. When I was about 4, my Mum had to bring me back to the UK as I wouldn’t eat anything except fish sauce and rice and had gotten so thin. The first place we would visit was my Grandparent’s house where they spoke the language Laos. I would always say that it sounded like drunk Thai, off-key but seemed to vaguely make sense. We would feast on sticky rice and thai omelette and palm sugar cakes and laze around on worn hammocks. It seemed ironic that I seemed to be allergic to mosquitos and ended up in the hospital and left me feeling that my thai DNA had betrayed me.

One word which I would use to describe my relationship with Thailand is threatened. Threatened that I wasn’t Thai enough, that I was a fake, that I couldn’t write or read Thai, only speak it. I often fantasize how my life would be different if only my Mum stayed in Thailand and I would be a full Thai. Maybe then I would be skinnier and become someone more belonging to the country. Maybe it was from this time that I started to feed off compliments and measure them to my worth. Like all intimate relationships, it had a love-hate element.

In many ways, I felt Thai and also felt like a stranger. My slightly tanned skin was suddenly White compared to the Thai people and I would hear the word ‘falang’ meaning foreigner or White person. Being White immediately made me beautiful or ‘supermodel material’ but through this principle, I felt immediately replaceable like a better looking White person could come along and take my place. My hair was long compared to the Thai students my age due to haircut rules in school. When people called me by my Thai name ‘Jula’ I felt at home, almost like a name of endearment. People would comment on how clear my Thai pronunciation was and how I knew the mannerisms of bowing and respect to elders despite growing up in the UK.

My Thai family for generations have lived as rice farmers, a humble occupation. During the harvesting season, my Mum and her family would sleep in the fields in temporary huts to watch the rice fields and hear the sound of the traditional singing kite. It was called ‘waow jula’ which I was named after. My Grandparents have passed away within recent years but I feel that I carry the generations with me to a new land and that I should not feel ashamed in any way. I am still a farmer in a way, a farmer of health through my current study of Osteopathy.

My Mum's friend in Bangkok is someone I've always looked up to. I never recall not calling her ‘mae kook’ meaning Mother Kook. She was my second Mother and the most stylish person to my 5 year old self and had a well-paid job and boss attitude. She never married but looks out for others like family and has immaculate fashion taste.

I feel that I retain the Thai culture through my Mum's small local Thai restaurant. It carries traditional art featuring giants and dragons in fairy tales. We speak the Thai language together on a daily basis even when I'm at uni through video chatting. A fresh curry with kaffir lime makes me feel as though I'm sitting on a cheap red plastic stool in the local town square and watching scooters zip past the looming picture of the King of Thailand.

I do see the efforts which are put into ethnic representation at university with leaflets in industry featuring people of colour and different ethnicity but not for those who are half like me. A lot of things need to change, mainly education, awareness and social stigmas. Small town mentality is a main perpetrator. People will always be wary of change or difference but how it translates into words and actions is what matters. It feels spectacular and also agonising to be different